This type of
fungus includes our familiar edible mushroom. Most, but not all gill fungi, have a stem
bearing a cap on top. The gills, or lamellae as they are also known, are on the underside
of the cap. The spores line the surface of the gills. A single fruiting body may produce
as many as 10,000 million spores!

The
thickness of the gills, the way they are attached to the stem, and their spacing are all
important ways of separating different species. There are in excess of 1,200 different
species of gill fungi in Britain.

These are
fungi which have fruiting bodies similar to many of the gill mushrooms, in that they have
a cap and a stem. However, boletes do not have gills on the undersurface of the cap.
Instead, they have thousands of tiny tubes arranged perpendicular to the surface of the
cap. The underside of the cap thus looks as if it is covered with thousands of little
holes, or pores. Each hole is the end of one of the tiny cylinders, which is lined with
spores. The fruiting bodies of some boletes in Britain reach sizes of 12" in
diameter. Some tropical boletes may exceed 2 feet.

The size and arrangement of the pores help to identify different kinds of
boletes. There are approximately 60 different species in Britain, almost all of them
growing on the ground in association with trees.

Polypores tend to
have very tough, leathery or woody fruiting bodies. They are often plate-like and most
grow out of tree trunks or rotting wood, although some may grow on soil. Some of
these fungi are known as Bracket Fungi, because they look like shelves
growing out of the sides of trees.

The pores
are located on the underside of the fruiting body and as with the boletes, are lined with
spores. Some of these fungi produce a new fruiting body every year, while others produce
one which continues to grow year after year. These may reach a considerable size. They may
also have visible rings on them which can be counted in a similar way to growth rings in
wood. There are more than 40 different species in Britain.

Stinkhorns are
truly extraordinary fungi which grow out of a structure which resembles an egg.

The fruiting body consists of a bell-shaped head mounted on a stalk. The head
is covered in foul-smelling slime, which contains the spores. The smell attracts flies
which crawl around in the slime, becoming covered in spores. The flies disperse the spores
when they leave and go elsewhere. Two common species.

These fungi contain their
spores inside a ball of some kind. The ball may be stalked or at ground level. The spore
mass in the centre of the ball is solid to begin with, but later develops into a powdery
mass of spores.

In Earth Stars the ball has a tough outer covering which
splits and spread out like petals to form a star-shape, exposing the inner
spore-containing ball. The outer covering in Earth Balls
just disintegrates with time to expose the inner spore mass, while in Puff Balls, the spores are released through a small pore
at the top of the ball. There are around 30 species in Britain.

This
category includes a wide variety of fungi which produce fruiting bodies looking like
shapeless blobs of jelly, or in shapes such as 'ears' and 'tongues'. They are soft, or
jelly-like and can be found on trees, or on the ground. There are approximately 10 species
in Britain.

The cup fungi
belong to an entirely different group of fungi to all of those described above. The
scientific name for this group is 'Ascomycetes'.
All of the fungi above belong to a group called 'Basidiomycetes'.
The chief difference between these two major groups is in the method of producing spores.
The Ascomycetes is a large group of fungi. They are the 'spore shooters'.

There are many different kinds of Ascomycetes. Some produce a cup-shaped
fruiting body, which has the spore-bearing surface on the top, rather than underneath, as
in the Basidiomycetes. Most Ascomycetes are microfungi, but there are about 80 species
with fruiting bodies of significant size which can be found in Britain.

*The numbers of different
species in Britain quoted next to each type are approximate figures only and refer only to
larger macrofungi, not microfungi.

Naming Individual Fungi

There are over 3000 larger fungi in Britain.
Identifying them can be relatively easy. Fungi such as King Alfred's Cakes, are very characteristic and
difficult to confuse with anything else. However, identification often requires very
specialist knowledge. The experts will look at features such as:

The size, shape and colour of the
Spores (this may require microscopic examination);

The colour, size, smell and textureof
the Fruiting body, as well as the remains of structures which protect it
as it is growing;

The type of Habitat where it
occurs is often also very important. Many fungi grow only in very specific places, or are
associated with particular kinds of trees.

Fruiting bodies may also be produced in
characteristic Seasons. For example, Saint George's mushroom is so named
because the fruiting bodies first appear around the 23rd April, which is St. George's Day.